Liberals Forced To Drop Travel Restrictions After Public And Industry Pressure

The federal Liberal government finally buckled under pressure from both the travel industry as well as the general public to drop the discriminatory vaccine passport, and mandatory testing system to board an airline or train. 

The travel industry was particularly instrumental in the Liberals’ backing down, as the industry finally started exerting concentrated pressure on the government to ditch the restrictions which had slowed down travel and slashed their customer base.

In an attempt to pitch this reversal by the Liberals as a win, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Dominic LeBlanc, stated that:

Today’s announcement is possible because Canadians have stepped up to protect each other. We are now able to adjust our policy because we have followed consistently the best advice from public health authorities,

The reason Minister LeBlanc gives is patently false as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the rest of the Liberal cabinet had been experimenting with the idea of mandating booster shots in order to board a flight. 

(Below is a video of Transportation Minister Omar Alghabra pushing the same sort of talking points at a press conference.)

Vaccination rates have also remained relatively flat over the past several months, with some of those who were already vaccinated getting boosters and those who were unvaccinated continuing to resist the pressures of the government to violate their personal healthcare principles.

The removal of the travel restrictions should take effect on June 20, which is obviously a political defeat seeing as Minister LeBlanc vowed that the government could bring the restrictions back at another time.

LeBlanc said that:

Our job as a national government has always been to keep Canadians safe. If the situation takes a turn for the worse, we are prepared to bring back the policies necessary to protect Canadians.

This is the equivalent of a supervillain declaring “I’ll get you next time” while fleeing from the scene. The fact is that the Liberals continued to push to make COVID-19 a top issue in Canada over a year after it was clear that government mandates and restrictions could not stop the virus even those who may have naively once supported vaccine mandates got tired of the constant fear-mongering.

At the end of the day, people just want to be able to live their lives, and over time it seemed like many Canadians were able to understand how ridiculous it was that unvaccinated people were being treated like dangerous super-spreaders while the prime minister is on his third COVID-19 shot and second infection.

Hopefully, the Liberals will learn their lesson from their public support collapse on this issue and not attempt to subject Canada to further medical segregation. It clearly has been hurting the fabric of the country.